Dear CCP,
Once again, it seems that several of your employees have been up to no good. We'll get into the details a little later, but the highlights are quite juicy: CCP employees abusing their roles to join player corporations and give themselves director access, RP-events being rigged and what I really thought we were over, further fraternization between your employees and members of BoB and the subsequent cover-up. These latter two events actually stem from the same source, a former ISD member.
Let us begin with CCP Sharkbait joining the corporation "DarkStar 1" and giving himself director access. This was not preceded by a customer service request that would in any shape, way or form require a CCP employee to join the corporation. Less then one minute after joining the corporation, he added the role "Director" to himself, roughly fourteen minutes later, he leaves the corporation and surrenders the role.
Upon learning of this, corporate officers from DarkStar 1 immediately filed a petition in an effort to discover the reasons for this. This petition was promptly deleted and CCP Sharkbait would not respond to in-game conversations.
Why would a CCP Employee ever join a corporation without being asked to do so or any prior communication indicating that this would take place?
Why was the petition filed by officials from DarkStar 1 deleted with no response or reason?
The second part of this sordid story is best told "as is". Below I've included the account of one Raekhan, a former member of ISD. His story is two-fold and will encompass both the rigging of RP-events, as well as the fraternization between members of BoB and CCP and its cover-up.
Without further ado, here is Raehkan's Story:
My apologies for the long delay.
I promised myself not to get involved in what, at the time, I called "An internet nerd revenge scheme' that was this issue, I felt that bringing this stuff to light would be cheap, and silly, and completely beneath anyone who was actually able to 'move on'....
Months after, I planned to re-evaluate....that time has passed, I still have no desire to play EVE, and thus, I can tell you some things....
please PM me with an email address (any email you so choose) to attach a file or two to...
Now, my story....
I am also known as Graelyn, a (once) big RP-community-guy. I was the executor of the Aegis Militia Alliance. (We kicked the Bloodraider NPC group out of the Bleak Lands Region, and recently stomped those StarFraction people.)
The AM guys guys are great GREAT people, and since the below incident ocured, they have safeguarded a very bad secret for a very long time, one that would ensure the dissolution of the RP community we tried so hard to maintain....
Mirial, once the executor of my Alliance, was banned, the center of what would be referred to as the 'Tetrimon OOC affair'.
What occured was this:
Several members of the alliance Aegis Militia were ISD members (completely in regulations and living that double-life as it was intended to be played, by the rules), however, Mirial, who was once an ISD member, managed to get the login/PW info to an ISD forum from a director of her corp who happened to be in ISD. (How this happened is still a mystery even to me, I am still inquiring)...
Basically, Mirial was accessing an AURORA website illegally, and was banned for it (Something I cannot in any theory disagree with, NDA was broken, and similarly, I can't argue with YOUR banning from EVE, sir...try to understand....), but it was the nature of the thing that caused so much distress....
You see, ISD claims that events are not rigged, that RP groups can influence the events in the world. This is a lie, and one that, after discovering, I did not reveal, in the fears that it would demolish the already on-the-ropes RP community in EVE.
AM already had suspicions, as by the end of the Tetrimon affair, we had been involved in more events that ANY other group in EVE without exception. In the course of this we often 'succeeded' in events that we later realized were not meant to be won, then watched as AURORA actors deperately lost the scenario (when actors have to resort to self-destructing thier own ships in the middle of battle, you know you have an ulterior motive underway in the story...*groan*...)
Mirial was in browsing (illegally) one of these ISD forums when one of the 'recommended' story paths was mandated by CCP, namely "_____ side must win, see to this immediately."
Upon reading this decree by CCP, Mirial showed his cards and revealed all on our alliance's Vent server.
2 hours after bringing this up in our Ventrillo channel, Mirial was banned from EVE...for telling his Alliance members what was up. Turns out I was only one of many members of ISD in my Alliance, and the others had hit the alarm to the ISD dept heads as soon as this talk beagn in our private Vent server....
Within 30 minutes (of the reveal in vent) I had 2 AURORA members convoing us INGAME, OOC, trying to play down the fact. The two in question argued with Mirial, but did NOT deny that rigging was going on, rather emphasising that it was all for 'The Greater Good'.
At the same time, Nebulai, Head of the ISD program, convoed ME (I was second in command of AM, an ISD-InterstallarCorespondents member, and a Mirial banning process was already in motion by 10-minutes into this, I was the primary focus of all damage control efforts), telling a different story, namely that RIGGING NEVER OCCURS, that all I had been hearing was nonsense....
AT THE SAME TIME, the document that I will give to you, was being sent to me by SEP-DOGAL, the AURORA tier 3 producer in charge of the Tetrimon Arc. He was sending it to me to show how much work had been done/lost with the arc, not realizing that the last paragraphs SPECIFICALLY DETAILED HOW THE ARC COULD BE RIGGED TO SUIT THE FINAL CCP DESCISION.
The only hint anyone else who played EVE got as to what had occured, came from this post:
http://myeve.eve-online.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=405843
With that, all said 'compromised' arcs were completely terminated, and all events in the matter hushed up quickly. The RP community has longed cursed Mirial's name for 'ruining' all of these arcs, unaware that he was banned for trying to bring this to the community's attention....AM held thier tongues for the good of that community, even after months of shit-talk...they never spoke....bless-em....
It was a serious palm-to-forehead moment. It was the day I relized how fucked up the game was.
It did not stop there.
Eventually, RP being ruined for me, I focused explicitly on my ISD char (His name was Raekhan, a reporter with the ISD for 1.5 years at his termination)
Complaining about the way Raekhan was banned seems odd to me, considering how much I was able to use him to understand 0.0 realities in a way Alliance leaders can barely approach (I was an Empire-space RP-alliance leader, so conflicts-of-interest never became a problem, and with Raekahn, EVERY DAY I was able to simply jump and watch, from perfect safety, any offensive any Alliance happened to be engaging in. I used my jumpdrives more than any other person in CCP for sure....), but the day I lost Raekhan?
Sickening and Stupid on the part of CCP, seriously, how could you ever accept the following as proper and effective damage control???
I was floating around in my Polaris frig, watching one of the massive, 270+-in-local battles in the south, BOB vs COALTION, BoB had already destroyed thier second POS in the system....when I 'text-jumped' (using admin "tr/ 'playername' jumpto command) to a certain Dread pilot I knew was in the action. Doing so teleports a polaris frig to that players ship...at 1 FOOT distance. I jumped to this position and immediately orbitted the gaggle of 20 dreads at 80KM, standard operating proceedure for ISD reporters....
A minute later, Daakon, of BoB, began yelling in local "Hey, Reporter, you bumped our dread!!!" This was a falsehood, since the dread I jumped to was on the outside of the group and I made sure not to do just that.
I ignored him. A year and a half of Reportering and you get used to ALL BoB members trying to order/bully you around. It is a common practice (WAY TOO GODDAMN COMMON) that ISD members are ordered to completely ignore.
Eventually, Mr. Daakon began giving me DIRECT ORDERS. "You must leave the system. Now. Move, you shit!!"
My response?
"Um...no?"
Their response was pretty indicative of the manner in which BoB is used to ordering CCP personnel around...in LOCAL CHANNEL of 250+, Daakon replied:
"Well, I guess I'll have to call up my friends in CCP and get you dealt with."
I was sitting in ISD's IRC channel, as is required anytime you are logged in as an ISD char, and I decided to inform my dept. head of this development. He seemed amused....
Until 40 seconds later....
ISD IRC acounts have a lot of symbols in their usernames. They signify time-in-service, department membership, and other things, but after 40 seconds, a BRAND NEW userID appeared, bereft of any such demarcations or designations...an illegal and brand new ID...
"Hey, anyone know some reporter named Raekhan!?"
Me:"Um, yeah, that's me."
"LEAVE THAT SYSTEM NOW, YOU ARE EMBARRASSING THE ISD AND CCP THE COMPANY!!"
<
Me: ORLY!?
My ISD BOSS: 'ORLY!'
the next minutes were interesting, as my ISD-IC dept head began briefing me on the minbute-by-minute actions of the internal affairs team (formed after your T-20 revelation I should point out) LEAPED on this matter in seconds.
Me: "So I guess a BoB director claiming he has CCP buddies at his beckon call, and the fact that said buddy showed up 40 sec later, will raise some heads at CCP?"
Boss: "Oh, I think it already has...."
Me: "Well, at least something good will come from all this mess..."
Boss: "We have his IP address."
Boss: "He's posting from CCP, he's Staff."
Boss: He's in the QA department...."
*after long pause*
Boss: Well, I'll tell you how this goes tomorrow, take care, Rae..."
I signed off.
Turns out, within 3 hours, every ISD-related account I had was banned.
ISD-ingame char, banned.
Forum-ISD, banned.
EVE-Online.com Admin access, banned.
AURORA-TEAMSPEAK, banned.
The freaking ISD-COUNTERSTRIKE server, banned.
I never recieved an email explaining it.
Every email I have sent to the comany politely asking for even a corp-speak explaination for this has been ignored. The company refuses to admit I exist.
I was banned for reporting a serious conflict-of-interest to my 'chain-of-command' within the company....
My character, free to play as a side-benefit of doing work for CCP, was disabled, asking for funds to restart....
...and that's the day I walked away....I have never looked back , and the games and projects I've become involved with since then have made me wish I hadn't wasted the 3 years I played EVE....
Everything I speak of here will be very 'circumstantial' evidence, un-totally-backable events that fanboys will decry as the bitter musings of another EVE dissident.
Let them think this. I truly do gain pleasure from the axiom of 'a fool and his money are soon parted' and would wish nothing from the majority of the EVE community than to keep sending thier money to this once-great-company-now-conglomerate that I once recruited dozens of players to with conviction.
It took a lot to convince me of the truth, and not even the 'caught-red-handed' events that YOU exposed to the community could break my fanboy shell....till I saw it myself and kicked myself for being a naive idiot...
I do not fear CCP's NDA prosecutions, as they possess no hard copy of said document...thank goodness for premature admissions to the program (I never mailed them the required paperwork, but got in anyway, a move I am glad now to have done).
Anyhow, that's my story.
None of my enemies ever realized just who I was, and what I could have abused to hurt them. This too is alright by me. Video games are a stupid thing to measure one's dick-size with, a fact that many seem slow to realize....
(You may quote the entirety of the preceeding text verbatim if you wish. My time in CCP/EVE is long over,. All preceding text is your to use as you wish. I actually do feel a bit dirty being a cog in this very crooked 'crowd control' system, and attempts to reveal it as such to anyone will escape my notice, I am too involved with other projects to care. Best of luck in your efforts....you were right...I was a fool....)
If you print anything, print this.
"Graelyn: I was naive. Istvaan, you were right, too damned right, more than you may ever realize, you cocksucker....."
[ 2007.03.20 06:30:15 ] Orange Species > isd reporters are not to interfere with gameplay
[ 2007.03.20 06:30:22 ] Orange Species > that includes getting too close
[ 2007.03.20 06:30:25 ] Orange Species > to our ships
[ 2007.03.20 06:30:32 ] D4kkon > petition her
[ 2007.03.20 06:30:57 ] Orange Species > nah no petition
[ 2007.03.20 06:31:00 ] Orange Species > msn chat is enough
[ 2007.03.20 06:31:05 ] D4kkon > rgr
Orange Species merely needs MSN to get CCP help, according to this log.
Employees of CCP are conducting themselves in an unbecoming manner with regards to interfering in the game world. First there was the T20 incident in the past, with the creation of Tech2 blueprints by an employee who also happened to be the leader of RKK corp's capital fleet, which were then handed to members of BoB. After the debacle this caused, I was quite shocked, nay stunned to learn that this relationship is still ongoing and quite healthy indeed. Then we discovered that Nebulai, head of the notoriously corrupt Aurora RP department, was a member of EVOL corp by the name of M Hoshi. And now today we discover that CCP Admiral Chamrajnagar is at the beck and call of BoB capital pilots.
I won't bore either of us with whiny details of how you enable cheating, stealing and an unbalanced environment, we've been over that. I will however try and instill a sense of urgency in you. This is a serious situation and it warrants the highest levels of attention on your part.
Sincerely,
The Customer.
BoB admits Dev Contact on Forums
We are pleased to see BoB Chief Diplomat Dianabolic's response to these allegations; chiefly, that they are 'friends' with the developers and that this is perfectly ok; We thank him for clearing up this issue, and have recorded his responses for posterity here.
A poster on Slashdot reveals the IRC logs corroborating part of Raekhan's story:
Other one really happened on irc:
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: ok anyone know an ISD named rekan?
Macayle: why?
[IC]Raekhan: I'm right here.
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: you need to leave that system
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: you are making an ass of yourself
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: and of ccp
[IC]Raekhan: ?
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: enticing the player base is not actions that you want to do
[IC]Raekhan: What..are...you....
[IC]Raekhan: ?
Cortes feels a facepalm coming on
[EA]Aristaqis: enticing? Was he putting on a strip show or something?
[IC]Tsuki facepalms
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: the local player base asked him to politly stop pushing dreads
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: that were undergoing a siege operation
[IC]Raekhan: I was not pushing a dread.
[IC]Raekhan: I'm 70KM away.
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: it does not matter.. posting in local "no"
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: and that "your not going away"
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: and that all you hear is "static"
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: and to complain to eris discordia
Admiral_Chamrajnagar: is not helpfull at all
Cortes: which wouldn't do much good given I'm the IC VA
That was the last I've seen of Raekhan.